Literary Devices: Phonic, Morphosyntactic, and Semantic

Posted on Jan 15, 2025 in Social Anthropology

Literary Devices

Phonic Devices

  • Alliteration: Repetition of initial consonant sounds in closely positioned words (e.g., “with the lifted wing”).
  • Onomatopoeia: Alliteration that mimics real sounds.
  • Paronomasia: Repetition of words with similar sounds (e.g., “evening flown forever”).

Morphosyntactic Devices

  • Anaphora: Repetition of a word at the beginning of a verse or prayer (e.g., “I saw the sea, I saw the dawn, I saw”).
  • Parallelism: Repetition of syntactic structures (as above, but on the first line of each verse).
  • Anadiplosis: Repetition of the last word or phrase of a verse or statement at the beginning of the following (e.g., “I also have my bars, and my roses. My bars.”).
  • Concatenation: Several anadiplosis in a row (e.g., “A tower. The square tower has a balcony. The balcony.”).
  • Epanadiplosis: Repetition of a word at the beginning and end of the verse (e.g., “Green, how I want you, green.”).
  • Inversion: Reversing the order of several words or structures (e.g., “Why it is not read, it is not written. Why it is not written, it is not read.”).
  • Chiasmus: Repetition in a distribution that creates a cross of elements with the same grammatical structure (e.g., “The air burns. The sun burns.”).
  • Hyperbaton: Changing the natural or expected order of elements in a sentence.
  • Pun: Repetition of words that sound the same, and at least one consists of two terms (e.g., “With dice, he wins counties.”).
  • Epithet: An adjective that expresses a quality that implicitly accompanies the noun (e.g., “sad wars”).
  • Pleonasm: Redundancy by repetition; unnecessary terms (e.g., “I saw it with my own eyes.”).
  • Enumeration: Expression of a series of successive elements.

Semantic Devices

  • Simile or Comparison: Comparing a real term with an imaginary one with similar qualities (e.g., “The moon creaks like a hot pan.”).
  • Metaphor: Substitution of the name of a reality for another with a name that bears some resemblance.
  • Allegory: Chained metaphors where imaginary actions or events described are real facts.
  • Synonymy: Sequence of continuous or near synonyms (e.g., “I will enclose, imprison”).
  • Synesthesia: Union of two realities or characteristics that are perceived by different senses (e.g., “color tone,” “hear the eyes,” “watch the ears”).
  • Metonymy: Designation of a reality with the name of another with which it has a relationship of proximity or contact (e.g., “The novelist’s pen” for the most famous writer of the time).
  • Symbols: A word or expression that refers to another reality, spiritual or deeper.
  • Hyperbole: Exaggeration (e.g., “A nose like mountains”).
  • Litotes: Adequacy of meaning, denying the opposite of what is meant (e.g., “make bread” where bread means food). Otherwise, it would mean that it is not very easy, referring, for example, to the fact that it is difficult.
  • Synecdoche: A type of metonymy; it is the substitution of the name for the whole (e.g., “winning the bread” for lunch).
  • Personification: Attribution of human qualities to irrational beings (e.g., “The forests say something”).
  • Antithesis: Confrontation or opposition of two antonymous terms (e.g., “As luxury by poverty. How much body by soul.”).
  • Paradox: Expression of a thought that seems absurd or contradictory (e.g., “Killing death, in life you changed me.”).
  • Gradation: Enumeration in ascending or descending order (e.g., “A hard slap, an invisible blow, a cold hack, a brutal homicide. A nudge down there.”).